


Inappropriate Contact

by Marie_L



Category: The Pretender, The Pretender (Novels) - Mitchell & Van Sickle
Genre: Captivity, Explicit Language, F/M, Loss of Virginity, Rebirth universe, Science Experiments, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-30 03:38:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1013632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marie_L/pseuds/Marie_L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sydney acquires a new project. The Centre has other uses in mind for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hana'ara

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: Minor spoilers for the new Rebirth book (no major plot points revealed).
> 
>    
> So, I couldn't stop thinking about the creepy Orwellian/Truman Show-esque white dome. And then the creep-fest thoughts just continued, and obviously telepathy is still on the brain as well. Even more than the original show, the visuals reminded me of demented animal behavioral experiment, with all attendent warped behavior in observers and observed alike.
> 
> This story takes place in the Rebirth universe/timeline, about 3 years before Jarod's escape. The telepathy in this story does not work the same way as in Dial E for Esper; the two stories are unrelated.

Sydney appraised the new arrival from the African field station, hunched over in his office chair, palled, exhausted, but with alert eyes taking everything in. He had received her thick psychogenic file but there was no personal information, apart from the results of the Centre's physical exam upon arrival. A girl in her mid-teens, long dark curly hair kept carefully braided, light brown eyes, olive skin that would be tan if she was to be out in the sun, underweight but otherwise in good health. Her name was Michal, no origin indicated.

Her English was simple and stilted, her accent unfamiliar, so he tried several other languages. She knew a little French, probably from her time in Cote d'Ivoire, but it was no better than her English so he stuck with that. She would need tutors in English if her project looked promising and her stay at the Centre was prolonged. Which based on the file was a strong possibility indeed. The name could be a variation of Michael or Michelle in any number of languages, so it didn't initially help.

"Where are you from, Michal?" She stared at him and shook her head. Whether that meant she didn't know or had been told not to say, he couldn't tell. "It's all right, I'm only here to work with you and your gifts. Am I pronouncing Michal correctly?" _M_ _YE-kal_.

She shook her head again. " _mee-KHAL_ ," with a fricative sound on the "kh." Something about that clicked with him, and he looked the name up on the Internet for confirmation before responding.

"Are you from Israel?" Her eyes widened in fear at his recognition, then gave the tiniest possible nod yes. Curiouser and curiouser. The Israelis had a cultural distaste for anything smacking of eugenics, for obvious reasons, so he wondered how the girl could possibly have come to the Centre's attention, let alone custody. They barely had a field office in Israel, solely for military and intelligence contacts so far as Sydney knew. Although her case was certainly one the intelligence boys would be interested in. No matter; he learned long ago to keep his head down and mouth shut when it came to the origin of any number of test subjects. Don't ask, don't tell was a cultural tradition at the Centre.

"I have the test results here from your previous location, but would you mind if we repeated some of that here? I'd like to see everything for myself." Michal shrugged an ambiguous consent.

He placed her in a small room, next door without a line of sight to another room with a computer screen. "When the light comes on here, try to tell me what picture you see on the monitor in the other room."

"No one there. I need ... people there ... to see."

"Just try. We'll do it with a volunteer in a minute."

He walked out to the control room and ran the experiment. Simple black and white line drawings appeared on the monitor in one room, and a light signaling she should guess went on in the other room. A duck, a car, a train, a cat, a shirt, a house. To his surprise she answered every trial correctly, even though no one was in the monitor booth. He walked back into her room. "I thought you said you needed someone to see the pictures."

"You see, I read you." He blinked and smiled approvingly. The control room was over 50 feet and three rooms away, clearly he was going to have to design better-controlled test conditions to deal with this one. Just as her file indicated, she had extraordinary range and skill.

 

******

 

After a week of testing at a distance, Sydney couldn't resist trying her out with personal contact. With himself of course, he was incredibly curious about what she could and could not see. Her file indicated that she could sense images, emotions and memories with vastly greater detail when she was actually touching a subject. He had determined that from a distance she detected visual images and thought speech fairly well, but only what the person was actively thinking about it at the time. For passive information retrieval -- the holy grail from an intelligence perspective -- touch was required.

However, he worried that language was finally going to be a significant barrier. He needed her to be able to communicate better than a preschooler to really describe what she could see. So Sydney sent a req up to SIS for a skilled Hebrew translator. He knew this would tip his hand that he was aware of her true origins, but they clearly hadn't gone to too much trouble to hide it, so he sent his request in without comment. They in turn sent down a fellow named Clausen, a dour ex-state department official with extensive expertise in the Middle East. He knew both Hebrew and Arabic, and clearly thought translating a teenager was waste of his time and skills.

"Let's get this over with. I'm giving you two hours of translation a day, then I've got better things to do. Make the most of it."

Sydney sat across a small table from her in one of the larger rooms in his lab space. He thought he had gained some trust with her over the past week, but now was asking for much more intimate contact. It was possible she could see everything in his mind, every memory, every doubt and worry and self-reflection. And of course, she might be able to access information about his other projects, a massive breach of security clearance. He didn't care. He wanted to see what she could do.

He took her by the hands gently. "What can you see? As much as you want to say. B'Ivrit."

She frowned, not sure if she should really switch to her native language. "I see ..." Clausen cut her off with a rapid fire of cleanly spoken Hebrew. It sounded like military orders to Sydney. Michal jumped, straightened up, and tipped her head to the side, concentrating. Then she began to speak in long melodic sentences, her voice beautiful, flowing, fluent. Sydney realized that he hadn't really heard her before now. He wondered how much of her intelligence he was missing from this one critical factor.

"She says you're thinking mostly about her right now, wondering how deep in your mind she can go. Now you're thinking about her voice, that it is beautiful like a song, and you wish you had brought in a translator before now. You want to get to know her, but feel that language may be a insurmountable barrier unless she becomes more fluent in English. Now you're a little dismayed at how well she is reading your thoughts, it's disconcerting, exciting from a scientific perspective but frightening from a personal one. Now you're thinking that a translator from SIS wasn't such a great idea, as he might spy on your conversations and report unapproved thoughts to your superiors ..."

Sydney suddenly let go of her hands. Clausen crossed his arms and grinned. This little assignment was going to be more interesting than he thought, worth trekking down to this godforsaken sublevel.

Sydney glanced at Clausen. "Ask her what she can see from my past, not what I'm thinking at this very moment." She understood the instructions even before the translation, and took his hands and began to speak again.

"She says she mostly sees a man in your past and present, a boy first then a man, whom you have raised, with whom you have acted out an enormous number of different lives. She says you love him as a son although you refuse to admit it to him, and his name is Jarod ..."

As soon as he heard "Jarod" come out of her lips, Sydney let go of her hands in an attempt to stop her, but Clausen finished the damning words. He was grinning even wider now. It wasn't every day you witnessed someone practically commit career suicide.

"Tell her we'll continue this with someone who doesn't have access to such sensitive project information."

"Best idea you've had all day."

 

******

 

Three weeks later, Sydney had gleaned an impressive amount of information from the girl. It wasn't easy to design an experiment to test the outer reaches of telepathy. The contents of any given mind, particularly of the past, were not replicable or often verifiable, so you were working with the potentially subjective memories of those being probed. But he believed she could accurately see deep and wide into a mind, even without the active cooperation of the subject. Her abilities were exactly what intelligence services wanted: Someone who could walk up to a stranger, touch them, and retrieve information without their knowledge.

The question was, what was the Centre going to do with her?

Along with the psychogenic tests, he had run a standard set of psychological and physical exams to create a full profile of Michal's potential. While she possessed superior intelligence and analytic ability for a person her age, emotionally and physically he deemed her unfit for field work. She was in the bottom tenth percentile, even among girls, for physical strength, flexibility and endurance. Emotionally he suspected she had a history of depression and anxiety, although she hid it well. That may simply have been a response to unknown previous experiences or even the Centre's controlling environment, but either way it did not bode well for shipping her off to an Indoctrination facility.

A month after his report, word finally came down: They wanted an evaluation of Michal's potential as a Pretender. And they wanted Jarod to do it. At the same time he was evaluating her, she could validate some of the newer holographic sims he had been producing. They also wanted to know how accurately the holograms matched the sims as Jarod experienced them in his mind. Two birds with one stone, the memo noted.

Horrified, Sydney called an emergency session of the Scientific Advisory Board. He had never seen a more foolish or reckless proposal in his life. He had already evaluated the girl, and although her intelligence was above normal, there was no indication she possessed the stratospheric talent necessary to be a Pretender. Additionally, it was questionable whether a child of her age could be successfully trained, even if she had the raw ability. There was also the delicate matter of her seeing classified material in Jarod's mind.

Mostly, though, he was concerned about the effect the plan would have on Jarod. Sydney was convinced he would form an immediate emotional attachment to the girl. She had an unknown, potentially traumatic background, and possessed abilities that would be fascinating to Jarod. He could sim many emotions, but real people would always have a potentially devastating hold over his psyche. Furthermore, they were proposing to train the girl possibly against her will, which could trigger Jarod's ambivalent feelings over his own training and isolation. Finally, he was barely aware the opposite sex existed except in the abstract, and they wanted to drop an adolescent female into the dome?

Twenty-seven years of careful training and research down the drain. That's what Sydney was afraid of, were Jarod to develop feelings for someone and then have her taken away. No level of technology would be sufficient to control him under such circumstances.

Sydney argued his case passionately to the SAB. They sat back dispassionately with their counter-arguments. Yes, the genomics people reported the girl was homozygous with "similar" allele to the Pretender gene, and had massive expression of the ptd4613 protein. No, they didn't expect her to be up and running sims anytime soon, they just wanted a comprehensive evaluation and Jarod's opinion on the matter. Yes, they heard his concerns about Jarod forming some sort of bond with her, but they were confident in Sydney's abilities to manage the situation as he always did. Furthermore Jarod was over thirty years old and had demonstrated superlative self-control for over a decade, so they were also confident in his ability to remain professional in the presence of a girl half his age.

Sydney had been overruled. He was dumbstruck. _Professional_? Jarod's emotions and curiosity about the outside world had been in delicate homeostasis since he was a teenager. And now they were throwing a live grenade in there and expecting everything to remain _professional_?

He did the only thing he could do. He went down to the dome and informed Jarod that he would be getting a visitor the next day, and gave him a Hebrew dictionary and Michal's file.


	2. Ashliot

Jarod looked surprisingly nervous before they brought the girl in. It was exceedingly rare nowadays for anyone off his project team to be allowed inside the dome, although Jarod did occasionally consult or give presentations via video phone within the Centre. To Sydney's knowledge he hadn't laid eyes on a female under the age of forty in over ten years.

"What is she like, Sydney? I read your report, but what's her personality like?"

"With the language barrier it is to hard to tell. She is nervous, guarded, obedient. She can tell what everyone around her is thinking, but since the reverse is not true, it gives her power and privacy."

Jarod knew all about hiding one's privacy in your own mind. It was the only avenue of privacy he had ever had. In fact one the reasons he was nervous was because she was likely to break through the last bastion of concealment he had available to him. It was worth it though to meet someone new, in person.

They brought her in, and neither of them said a word initially, just stood and stared, evaluating the other. Jarod thought she would have been described as pretty, except that she evinced an overwhelming picture of self-neglect. She was alarmingly thin, and her hair and skin both showed a brittle flakiness, betraying long-term nutritional deficiencies. She was also pale with dark circles under her eyes, exhausted-looking, as if she had gone without sufficient sleep for many years.

For her part, Michal didn't look so much at Jarod's physicality as she did at his mind, which she sensed as appealing and complex before she even entered this unnerving domicile. She could feel his openness, his frank curiosity that reached out and grabbed everything in his environment, how he was analyzing a million factors a second and putting it all together and filing it away unconsciously. She felt the dualism in his mind, how he compartmentalized his true self from all the simulations, to avoid getting lost and sinking into the sims permanently. She felt an ocean of knowledge, not the content of it but simply its presence pushing on his mind, idea after idea vying for attention on his conscious self. He had extraordinary self-control over the ocean, the ability to bring any part of it up or suppress it or decide which wave merited further attention. She felt that part of his mind that _did_ sink into the sims, that deliberately lost itself in the ocean or a part of it at least, and the tethering that connected it to the other walled off portion of his mind.

It was almost too much for her to take in, and she hadn't even touched him yet.

Sydney cleared his throat through the silence and made introductions. Then he added, "I'll leave you alone for the morning, but please remember not to have any inappropriate contact."

Jarod tore his eyes off her to send an irritated glance to Sydney. Michal felt a small wave of anger swell up as he thought, _does he think I will throw myself at the first girl they put in here?_ She looked at Sydney too, placidly. "I need to touch to see the simulations."

Sydney and Jarod continued to briefly stare down each other, a lifetime of old emotions and hidden communication flowing between them. Finally Sydney turned his attention back to Michal and told her "You can do what you need to do," and left the dome, leaving them alone. Or as alone as they could be with dozens of cameras and an unknown number of observers, including the omnipresent behavioral coders that tagged every second of Jarod's life.

When Sydney left Jarod smiled at her and said, "Hello, shalom, I''m Jarod," and held out his hand to shake. She looked at his face for really the first time since entering the room, and finally noticed how lovely his physical appearance was, despite the drab clothing. With a second's hesitation, she shook his hand. As they touched, she had to close her eyes to try and get a grip on the overwhelming wave of stimuli pouring out of his brain. She didn't have a wall in her mind to protect her consciousness. _This is too much, I need to block or let him go._

Jarod's eyes widened as he heard the words. She saw the meaning of her thoughts reflect in his mind, and felt him get control of the ocean, that amazing control, and yank it back. In her startlement she almost wanted to push him back and rip her hand away, but some part of her refused to budge.

_Can you hear this?_

_Yes. This is not in your file, Michal._

_The only other person who has ever heard me was my grandmother. I didn't think I could do it again with anyone else._

_We need to stop shaking hands and sit down. The coders will notice that this handshake is taking a statistically abnormal amount of time._ And he let go of her hand and motioned for her to sit in a office chair near his desk, and did the same in a second chair. Out loud he said, "That seemed to overwhelm you a bit, maybe we should start with practicing putting up some mental boundaries with each other before doing some sims." He held his hands out for hers, both this time. _All right, probably good to talk for awhile now. Are you okay, is this too much for you? I don't think I've ever had a conversation that wasn't recorded before. Do you think you can transmit something other than words, like emotions or images?_

His excitement and fascination was infectious, but also still overwhelming her mental boundaries. _I'm sorry, can you slow down? It's a lot, your mind has a lot in it. Can you pull back the ocean again?_

_What do you mean by 'ocean'?_

_Your mind, all of your knowledge and sims and previous personas, it feels like a vast ocean, with small waves coming up to your conscious attention. It's hard to process. You’ve lived with it your entire life so you have mental structures in place to handle it._

Now he was trying to imagine it, and his thoughts of the ocean were occupied on a wave in the ocean. She suppressed an impulse to laugh. Many more waves popped up pulling on his attention this way and that; his thoughts were all over the place.

_Why is your English so much better in your thoughts than indicated in Sydney's report?_

This time she could not resist a smile. _I'm not actually thinking in English, it is an illusion that you hear it in English. It's just the intent and meaning that comes through, not real words for the most part. It's the same reason I can read someone's thoughts pretty well even if I do not understand their native language._

_What if the person is thinking about something you are not familiar with?_

_I get a mental picture too. I don't know what you would hear. What do you hear when I think about, say, a shofar?_

_I just heard 'shofar.' What's a shofar?_

_A primitive musical instrument made out of a ram's horn, blown on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur._

_Ah, Jewish holidays. I've heard of those. What do you do for them besides blow a shofar?_

On and on their conversation went, Jarod peppering her with questions. After about twenty minutes, he thought, _It's going to be difficult to hide the fact that we are mutually talking. They may have already figured it out. We should talk out loud more to throw them off._

_You don't want to tell?_

He was appalled by the very suggestion. _They may put a stop to it if they figure it out. The Centre has no concept of privacy, at least for me. They would splay my brain open like a dissected frog if they could. In fact I think that's why they let you in here._

_I'm happy to tell them whatever you want about your brain. We are going to have to do some real work at some point, though._

_After lunch we'll do a sim, just keep talking to me now, please?_

_Aren't you supposed to be evaluating me as a Pretender or something?_

_How do you know the evaluation isn't ongoing?_

_Because ... I can read your mind? You haven't thought about it once._

_Oh, I'm sure I can come up with something later for the report. I plan to drag out this 'evaluation' at least week, maybe two with some creativity._

_And what will the final conclusion be in your analysis, professor?_

_You are clearly not a Pretender. Whatever your capacities were when you were born, they've been molded into something else now. I'll have to think about what would be most advantageous to say in the report, though. The truth may not serve you well._

At that point, a server came in with their midday meal. Two green sludgy shakes, slightly different for each of them. Jarod dutifully picked his up and started drinking it. Michal just stared at hers with evident disgust. "I miss real food."

"Why? It's all just energy in the end." He knew cooking and eating were social functions in every human society, but the actual content of food seemed to just be cultural tradition. He couldn't imagine why, besides custom, you would choose to eat one food over another. Jarod actively thought all of that at her, so she could catch it without touching him.

She rolled her eyes at this lecture. "Food not only energy. Taste, too. This tastes not good." _Even in Africa they gave me rice and fruit to go with the supplements, but here they are just relentless_ , she thought. It was frustrating to hold this monosyllabic conversation after their earlier talk. She resisted the urge to just grab his hand and communicate freely again.

Jarod shrugged. It tasted like lunch to him. What were all these great tastes she missed, anyway? "Eat. You're too skinny, you need to eat." She picked up the shake and gagged down about a third of it, then pushed it away. He looked at that with concern. "Eat more. If you don't drink it all, you won't get enough calories for the day."

"No." She crossed her arms and leaned back with closed eyes, as if to rest.

Jarod finished up and motioned the server to take everything away. "Okay, lets work on a sim now. I'll show you something simple in my mind, then you can see the holographic demo to compare."

They went into the projection room and sat on the floor, cross-legged across from each other, and gently took each other's hands.

_You wanted to know what tastes I miss? Everything. Oranges. Bourekas. Falafel. Pizza. Cucumbers. Sufganiot. Challah. Chicken soup. Rugelach. They all taste different, and they are all a million times better than green slime._

_I don't know what most of those things are._

_That's a big part of your problem. Oranges are a really sweet juicy fruit that taste like sunshine dropped into your hand. Bourekas are pastries with a flaky oily crust, filled with mashed potatoes or salty cheese or other fillings, amazing first thing in the morning from the bakery shops. Falafel -- how can you even *exist* without knowing falafel? Do they even have it in this country? Garbanzo bean balls that are deep fried until they are crispy, then wrapped up in a fluffy pita with your choice of salad and tehina drizzled on top, maybe some fries stuffed in there too if your really hungry. God, I would cut off a finger for a good falafel right now._

_You know, obsession with food is a sign of chronic malnutrition. You should eat more._

Michal made an undefinable "arggh" sound and flung his hands at him for a moment. Then she sighed and took them again.

_Jarod. Don't you ever want to be free of this place? Free to experience life, not just imagine it in your mind? Free of this room, which is designed to push you inside yourself as much as possible? Because as wondrous as your simulations probably are, they are nothing compared to what is outside._

_Yes. I have thought about leaving many times. But how do you know that my simulations are not as good as what's outside? They've told me over and over that they *are* an accurate measure of reality._

_Okay, chochem, let's see you do it, and I will judge. Something not very stressful, please._

Jarod didn't know what a "chochem" was, but he did know sarcasm when he heard it. Maybe sarcasm didn't translate well. _I do think it's funny they've sent in a young girl to judge the sims. How much life experience can you have had?_

_I've seen many lifetimes worth of memories from people, all sorts of people. That's what qualifies me to judge. When they were making you do sims when you were a little boy, was it less accurate or important because you were young?_

She looked weary, weighed down, older than her external body. He wondered if he ever looked that way when he was a boy. In that moment he decided to show her something happy, or at least beautiful, to lift her spirits. The problem was there weren't many happy, stress-free sims to choose from. Then suddenly he thought of one.

_Yeah, that would be a good one._

He jumped a little, having forgotten momentarily that she could see his entire thought process. _Sorry, I'm not used to someone being able to hear everything that I'm thinking._

_It's all right, no one is. I am familiar with hearing people's private opinions of me. Show me the simulation, Jarod._

The client for this particular sim was an unusual one, a major agricultural biotech company. They had created a new type of strawberry that could hold up to mechanical picking, and were in the process of working with a subsidiary company to design the new harvesting machine. Jarod was required to both look at the engineering details of the proposed machine to make sure it would work as intended, and also put himself in the mind of the farmer, to uncover any hidden defects or annoyances in its real-life operation. This simulation was done not long after the holographic projection system had been installed, so he also created a demo of his revised machine to impress the clients.

Jarod quickly went through his thought process for the design of the harvester. She could see how he ran their original machine through a strawberry field in his mind, identifying over twenty flaws at once during the first pass. Then he morphed the device to correct every defect. Finally he Pretended to be a large-scale strawberry farmer, imagining himself both operating and maintaining the machine, then morphed it again to correct an entirely new set of flaws. Michal understood that he was demonstrating an abbreviated version of the process; the real simulation had actually required over thirty passes with the harvester operated in various ways, with design tweaks between each pass.

None of that was the beautiful part. What was really impressive was the strawberry field itself. He imagined the warm early summer sun just right, warm and dry but not blasting; rich dark soil in long raised lines, with straw put down between each line; the strawberry plants crowded together on top of the each line, green and shiny, with ripe red berries hanging in clusters down the line.

_That is lovely. How did you imagine it without ever seeing a real strawberry farm? How long did you work on it, just the field?_

_I was given a lot photographs and video, plus quite a bit of research into the biology and agronomy of strawberry plants. It took a few days to get the details right, but it was necessary time spent. If the field part of the simulation was wrong, then all of the subsequent details on the harvester would also be wrong._

_And how long would it have taken you to create the field in your mind if they had just let you visit a real one?_

His dismay at her question was immediately evident. He wanted to turn away or let go of her hands, but that was no escape from her reading his mind.

_I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable, Jarod. Your simulation is beautiful, your mind is beautiful. I have never seen anything like it. But they are hindering you here, trapped like an animal in this room. They tell you that they are protecting you and nurturing you when they are really cutting your hands off at the wrist. Because it benefits them, not you._

_But I'm helping people with my simulations here._

_How, by making a big company a little more money? They can do this without you. Outside you could help people in your own way, on your own terms._

She could feel him becoming more agitated and upset, and the ocean in his mind became like a storm, with wave after violent wave crashing into his thoughts. _It's okay, just think about it for later. Do you want to show me the demo now?_

He nodded, and with a new task to focus on he reigned in his emotions as quickly as they started. He got up and tapped a code into the red control panel, then placed his hand on it to activate the projector. The room suddenly brightened to outdoor sunlight levels, and the temperature increased a to a degree comfortable for shorts. These two facts alone warmed Michal's heart, and she tipped her head back to feel the "sun" on her face. She hadn't felt real sunlight like that in years. Then the field itself appeared beneath them, ground crunching under their feet, the smell of strawberries wafting in the air. The smell was amazing, not a one-note artificial strawberry odor at all but as complex as Michal remembered real strawberries to be. It made her stomach grumble.

They sat cross-legged on the ground with the projection running and held hands again.

_How can you smell that and not want to eat a real strawberry?_

_I'm sure they taste very good, but it is not necessary to actually eat one to experience the 'strawberry.'_

_You are missing out on so much. Someone is coming, I think we are done for the day. Will they let me come back tomorrow?_

_I hope so. You are going to tutoring now, right? Study hard. Eat something._

_Tutoring. Ah yes, that's what they told Sydney. No, there had been no tutoring. Just the interrogations. Sydney is beginning to think I'm stupid from not improving my English after eight hours of 'tutoring' every day._

_Interrogations!? Are they hurting you?_

_No. I'm the one doing the interrogating._

They came in retrieve her before he could ask any more questions.

 

******

As soon as she left Jarod got on the video phone with Sydney, who of course had been watching the entire time from the observation room. Sydney assumed Jarod wanted to talk about whatever he had seen in Michal's mind -- and he had seen or heard something, Sydney was sure of it. It was obvious they were communicating somehow. But that's not what Jarod wanted to discuss at all.

"Sydney. You've got to get her to eat something. She's starving herself."

"Michal just had a physical two months ago and was in reasonably good health. Perhaps she was just too nervous to eat much today."

"No. Have them check her again. Maybe you can get her to eat some regular food, Sydney. She likes oranges." And he hung up, an irritating habit he was developing as far Sydney was concerned. _Oranges_. How could he know that unless they were talking to each other?

 


	3. Hatikva

Mooney plunked down his man bag the observation room and logged in. He had taken one whole day off, and his co-coder Watkins had called last night to inform him that he had missed a doozy. Jarod had apparently exhibited an entirely new behavior Watkins had to add into the ethogram, and not even while doing a simulation. He had heavily intimated there might be more to come.

Mooney and Watkins were the behavioral coder team assigned to Jarod's project. It was their job to watch, classify, categorize, transcribe and tag every second that Jarod was awake, so that the Centre could have a complete statistical analysis of any behavior at any point in his life. It turned out, for all the Centre's technological prowess, human beings were still better at interpreting human behavior than computers. Except sleep of course. Even the best coder had a hard time telling the difference between someone asleep and someone just lying still in bed faking it, so they had a complex algorithm based on breathing patterns and subtle movements and such, that apparently was even able to tell the difference between REM and non-REM sleep.

Watkins had designed the system some twenty-odd years ago and brought Mooney in for the alternate shift. Mooney then had been a lowly research assistant at the Yerkes Primate Center, doing chimpanzee behavioral analysis literally with paper, VHS tapes and a stopwatch. Watkins had offered him four times his previous salary -- bumping him up to a level beyond even what tenured PhD were getting at Yerkes -- to help him implement a new computer-based coding system for a secret project. One that was, as Watkins put it at the time, "exciting but of an ethically dubious nature." Mooney, who was sick of watching chimps mount each other all day for a low five figures and unwilling to submit to the indentured servitude of grad school, readily agreed. He still wasn't sure the Pretender project was a step above the chimps, but at least it paid well and he had house with an ocean view.

It was tradition in the observation room to talk as little as possible, ostensibly because everyone in it was supposed to have their attention on Jarod at all times. There was always a bored sweeper on duty watching him live, and during the day at least one of the two coders, who generally just reviewed recordings but might have a live feed if there was something juicy to watch. Watkins and Mooney needed to be on the same page at all times with regards to Jarod's little tics, lest their categorizations start to drift from each other and reduce their inter-observer reliability. They therefore left handwritten notes for each other in, ironically, old unused red notebooks, which Sydney had a whole stack of in his office.

Like many people who have worked closely together for a long time, the two men had developed many in-jokes and inappropriate sardonic comments. Watkins had left a notation indicating the file to review from the previous day. Officially they were coding it as "holds hand(s) with Subject P475 with apparent communicative intent." Unofficially Watkins was calling it "Jarod mindfucks the telepath," and Mooney had to laugh.

 

******

 

Sydney had Michal brought up to his office before she was scheduled to see Jarod again. Jarod wasn't prone to hyperbole, so he had had her weighed early in the morning. He was alarmed to see that she had lost eleven percent of her body weight in the eight weeks she had been at the Centre. The kitchen estimated that she had been eating less than 800 calories a day based on what was being sent back, and had already tried increasing the caloric density of the shakes so she would ingest more.

Sydney motioned for her to sit down. "So, did you enjoy your time with Jarod yesterday?" She shrugged nonchalant agreement. "What did you talk about?"

"Talk? We worked on sims."

"It seemed like you were talking. In your minds." He pulled out some items he had picked up at the cafeteria. A bagel with cream cheese. A banana. Orange juice. She looked at the food, then looked at him. He looked back at her with crossed arms, and didn't even bother to articulate in his mind the quid pro quo.

She picked up the orange juice and began to talk.

 

******

 

They sat on the floor of the projector room again, on top of a blanket Jarod had dragged in there from his bedroom next door. Jarod was twitching with excitement from all the questions he had thought of overnight to ask her.

_Jarod. I have to tell you something. Sydney offered me a bagel if I would tell him what we talked about yesterday. I'm sorry, I was really hungry. I told him some of it._

_It's okay_ _._ She could tell he wasn't mad at her, but was disturbed that Sydney had extorted her instead of just giving her the food. _Go ahead and tell him what he wants to hear, you need to eat._

_What do you think he wants to hear?_

_Whatever will indicate that I'm not becoming emotionally attached to you. Wouldn't want any inappropriate contact._ They both smiled.

_Holding hands doesn't count?_

_Well before yesterday it would have but they haven't come charging in here to stop it so ... I haven't figured out what the Centre's game is here yet._

_How do you know it's a game?_

_There's always a game. Tell me about these interrogations they are having you do._

_It's the same as in Africa. They bring me in to someone, tied in a chair with their shirt off, and have me retrieve information from the person's mind. I have to touch, I usually go for the back so I don't get bitten or scratched. They only tell me what to look for right before going in. Sometimes it's a simple piece of information, sometimes it's elaborate or I have to dig. They record what I say and translate it later._

_Who are the people being interrogated?_

_All kinds, terrorists, criminals, witnesses to things they shouldn't witness, employees they suspect of something, people from other organizations that know something valuable. I have to do it even the people are innocent._

_Why, what will they do if you refuse?_

_They will hurt people. In Africa I refused to do it once, to a woman who had been imprisoned and raped by a warlord. They wanted information she had overheard while he had her. When I refused they brought in her baby and shot him in front of both of us._ She let go of him and dropped her face into her hands for a minute, trying to get a hold of herself. He wanted nothing more than to bring her in for a hug, but knew that would probably bring the sweepers down upon them. _I'm sorry. I don't want to do it. I don't want to be here. But I can't think of a way to leave either. I should have tried to escape when I had the chance in Africa._

_Why didn't you?_

_I didn't know where I would go. I would stand out and why would a tribe in Cote d'Ivoire help me? They told me I was likely to be sent to America, I thought it would be better to escape there. There are lots of Jews in America, they will help me. But from this place it seems impossible._

_Why would someone be more likely to help you if they happen to share your religion? Shouldn't people try to help one another just because they are fellow human beings?_

_Maybe they should, but that's not the way the world works. It's not just religion, they will help me because I'm a member of their tribe, their people. Even in this goyish land I'm sure the Jews still remember some things. You don't have a people so you don't understand._

_Michal, how did you get here? How did the Centre get you?_

_I was raised by my grandmother in Ashkelon. My parents were killed in a car accident when I was a baby. Apparently I was thrown from the car in my baby seat and survived unscathed, it was something of a sensationalized miracle at the time. My grandmother taught me how to live in the world without going crazy from hearing everyone's thoughts, how to control it and find something in a person's memory. She died when I was eleven and I went to live with my uncle, on my dad's side. My uncle was involved in intelligence work and had done some terrible things. I think he sold me. They drugged me and I woke up on a truck in an Arab country, Egypt I think._

_What's your full name?_

_Michal Heller. What's yours? How did you get here? I could go digging for it but I don't want to. Not to you._

_I was brought here when I was four. They told me my parents were killed in an airplane crash, but I'm not sure. It's pretty convenient that I'm supposedly an orphan when they wanted to isolate me anyway. I can't remember them, I can't remember my last name. I've tried and tried, but I can't remember a thing._

They both had their eyes closed during this exchange, and Jarod leaned forward in pain as he was thinking of his parents. Their foreheads inadvertently touched for just an instant, then they remembered they were not supposed to touch and pulled apart. Somehow Jarod was comforted anyway.

_Michal, I'd like to help you plan an escape. I can't let you be trapped here as a prisoner your entire life._

_I'll only do it if you make a plan for yourself, Jarod. I can't let you be a prisoner for the rest of your life either._

He smiled at this small piece of self-sacrifice. _Fine, I'll make a plan for me, you'll go first though. Do what they ask in the meanwhile. Talk to Sydney, let him feed you breakfast, do the interrogations, whatever else they ask._

_Should we do a sim or talk out loud or something?_

_Just an educated guess but I don't think they really care about that. They already know we are talking in here. For some reason this is being tolerated. I'm missing something, I can't figure it out._

The server came in and softly interrupted them with lunch. Jarod was gratified to see her choke down more of it that day.

 

******

 

After Michal left the second day, Sydney came down in person to talk to Jarod about her. He immediately confronted Sydney about the food that morning.

"I would have given it to her in any case, you know that Jarod. I just wanted to know what was going on in here."

Jarod had the urge to say _none of your damned business_ , but he knew better than that. "Now that you have your answer, what are you going to do with that information?"

"I don't know. It depends on you, Jarod. Can you continue with the work with this ongoing ... distraction?"

"She's a person, not a distraction. Have I ever failed to do anything you have asked?"

"No."

"Sydney ... do you know why they are letting Michal in here? The real reason."

"I only know what I've told you." Almost, but not entirely, the truth.

 

******

 

As the days went on they fell into a comfortable pattern. Jarod did show her many of the sims and holograms, but they quickly discovered that this only took up about 45 minutes of the three hours allotted to them each morning. The rest of the time they sat and talked. Jarod's curiosity about the outside world were insatiable, although she often felt bad because she thought her responses were inadequate. She didn't know about a lot of the world, and often what she knew was through other people's memories, not her own experiences. He didn't seem to care, and pressed her for details of her -- it seemed to her -- boring childhood. Jarod's only knowledge of that region was the geopolitical perspective of the Israeli-Arab conflict, and knew nothing about how ordinary people lived their lives there.

She told him about her school, crowded and noisy and full of too many minds, an ethnic riot of the offspring of north Africans and Russians and Ethiopians. She found it hard to pay attention with the thoughts of so many people near her, and was often yelled at by her teachers and generally received poor marks. She frequently skipped school and took buses to other places, quiet places in the desert or archaeological sites. Jarod found it fascinating that no one stopped her from doing this, and she waved a hand and said that children rode the buses all the time and no one cared as long as you had a cell phone and looked like you knew where you were going.

She told him about the beaches and ruins of Ashkelon, her most frequent destination when truant. How it felt to swim in the warm and filthy Mediterranean, what the sand dunes were like, what it was like to walk on the sea wall of the ancient city. How she tried to imagine the city in all of its ages, the Philistines and Arabs and Crusaders among others, all the people long dead that had lived there and looked out over the same beach and same sea.

She told him how she and her grandmother would visit her cousin in a suburb of Jerusalem, for Passover or sometimes Shabbat too. The cousin's family was religious and lived in a neighborhood of like-minded peeople, and although it was only an hour away may as well have been on a different planet. The married women all covered their hair, and everyone had to be completely covered in heavy clothes even when it was blastingly hot outside. She told him what Passover was and all about the special holiday foods, and pointedly detailed the seder story about the escape of the slaves from Egypt.

She retold him stories from her grandmother, including the one about how her grandparents met and fell in love and secretly ran off together. Her grandfather was the son of Moroccan immigrants, while her grandmother was the daughter of Germans who had come over in the twenties. In those days it was not acceptable for good Ashkenazi girls to marry swarthy Sephardic men, so the story was very Romeo and Juliet. Then of course she had to explain about Romeo and Juliet.

One day Jarod asked her, _Tell me, did_ _your grandmother_ _ever sing you lullabies or songs?_

 _I haven't talked about singing yet? Of course she did, there are so many songs. Do you want to hear one? Do you think they'll plotz if I sing out loud? It's not really singing if you are just thinking it._ They were getting more and more bold, not even maintaining a pretense of working anymore.

_Do it. I want to hear your voice._

_Hmmm. This is one from the Bible, the 23rd psalm. It's sung on Shabbat and probably at synagogue too, I'm not too sure of that. We only went on high holidays, savta wasn't big on shul, she felt it was an institution by men for men, women need not apply. They're mostly very orthodox in Israel._

Jarod now knew what all of that meant.

She began to sing a slow haunting melody in a minor key. " _Mizmor l'David, adonai roi lo echsar ..."_ Her voice was soft but strong and perfectly in tune. Jarod was transfixed, the melody dominating the ocean of his thoughts, reducing it a placid lake with nothing but the song skimming over its surface. When she was done, he begged for more. _Okay, how about a secular one? This one played on the radio a few years ago ..._

After that, she had to come up with a new song for him every day. Sometimes she just made them up. He didn't care as long as he heard her voice.

The escape plan was coming along as well, but Jarod still wasn't satisfied with it. He calculated that she had an 80 percent chance of success from one of the upper sublevels, where security was lighter, but only 55 percent from the floor they were holding her on. He wanted that extra 25 percent. How to get her up higher in the building? The infirmary was on an upper floor, but it was risky to try to deliberately send her up there. If they detected her harming herself, they might send her to Renewal instead. He continued to sim it, over and over with different ruses, and asked her to get information about the building from any Centre employees she happened to go near as well.

 

******

 

Sydney and Jarod continues their detente over Michal. Every day Jarod asked him why the Centre was allowing him to see her, and every day Sydney was unable or unwilling to reply. In truth Sydney didn't know. He had gone before the SAB again to argue that the girl was a danger, and again they had overruled him and ordered him not to interfere with the visits, so long as Jarod was getting his other projects completed in a satisfactory manner. Sydney finally cornered one of the SAB members walking to the cafeteria, and got her to admit that the order came from above. She didn't know the real reason either.

Sydney was increasingly worried about the effect Michal was having on Jarod. He continued to pump her for information about their conversations, feeding her breakfast every morning. Although Michal was circumspect it was clear she was telling Jarod all she knew about the outside world. A little of that was fine; Jarod has always been curious about human behavior and obviously needed to know much about it to successfully complete many simulations. But there was always a danger that knowledge of the outside world might trigger a desire to actually be out in it, a feeling that was clearly unacceptable.

Then the singing started, and as Sydney, watching from the observation room, saw the look on Jarod's face as he watched her, the worried feeling started to turn to dread.

 

******

 

As the weeks went by, Michal started to look and feel tremendously better. Jarod thought it was just the food, but Michal knew it was more than that. After four years of virtual isolation, with no one to talk to and only the passive thoughts of strangers to keep her company, the daily conversations with him made her feel like a human being again. People had either hated her because she had to violate them, or avoided her because they still knew she could peer into their thoughts from afar. Jarod wasn't bothered by that. He relished contact with her, waiting eagerly or impatiently for her each day, the only person he had ever had a private conversation with. She in turn loved to feel that contact too, her mind touching his beautiful one. She had tried to express what it felt like, his mind, and had failed even in thought speech, but he liked to hear her inadequate descriptions anyway. Sometimes he tried to Pretend being a telepath, imagine what his mind felt like to her, which led to a disconcerting echo on her end.

She could tell, as time went on, that he had feelings for her that he buried as deeply as possible. It was impressive, really, his capacity for repression. Every day when he touched her hands he felt a little jolt, and ruthlessly squelched the wave as it appeared in his mind. Only when she was singing did he let go of the control a bit, because then they were operating under the illusion that it was the song he was reacting to, and not her.

Michal knew why he couldn't accept it. It wasn't just that Jarod was loath to admit that Sydney was right, although of course he had been spot on in his predictions. It was more of a global fear that the Centre was right. That he was obviously abnormal in some way, unfit to live in ordinary society, deserving to be isolated from most human contact. He desperately wanted love and affection, but felt like a monster to express that longing in a socially prohibited manner.

For her part, Michal had no such qualms. She knew her life was not her own, that she had no control over what they made her do day after day. But nobody could read _her_ mind, not even Jarod, although his observational powers were great enough that it seemed like telepathy sometimes. She was free in her own mind to do whatever she wanted. And so late at night she would wrap herself tight in a blanket like a mummy, and touch herself while fantasizing ridiculous scenarios: That the power went out while she was in the dome, and in the sudden dark and privacy they kissed and slowly took off their clothes and touched each other all over. Or that he had discovered a certain corner that the cameras somehow didn't cover, and he would take her there and fuck her against the wall. And then she would visit him for real the next morning, and try not to let her physiological responses betray her attraction too much, lest she make him feel awkward and uncomfortable.

 

******

 

A few weeks after her visits started, Jarod decided, a little sadly, to give her the modified pilfered key card, in case she saw a good opportunity to escape. They had gone over the plan dozens of times, covering different contingincies. As Jarod had commonly noted in his sims, technology was fairly easy to thwart, but the reaction of real people were not always so easy to predict. She made him promise to try to get out too, however ambivalent he felt about it, and find out about his parents.

It still bothered him that he didn't know why the Centre was letting -- at this point, practically encouraging -- him to talk to her.

_I'm still missing something, Michal. Tell me about your day, from beginning to end._

_The lights come on suddenly, and I know I have a half an hour before they will come_ _in_ _. I take a shower and put on the clothes they_ _leave_ _for me and braid my hair. I sing a lot while doing this and try to think of a new song for you._ _Then they come and take the spit sample and leave the nasty shake for me to eat ..._

_Wait. What spit sample? You never told me this before. Are you sure it's saliva and not a buccal cheek cell sample?_

_Definitely spit_ _, they get annoyed if I don't give them enough_ _. They've taken it every morning since I've been here. The servers don't know what it's for._

Jarod's mind raced ahead. What biomarkers could they be looking at that required daily saliva samples for months on end? Something that fluctuated from day to day. The answers _estrogen_ and _progesterone_ snapped into his head, and the waves raced ahead one on top of another, combining to form the inexorable conclusion. It was too fast for Michal to follow the whole thought process, but her eyes widened as she heard the end result.

_Well that's one way to get to the infirmary._ _I don't understand, Jarod, if they wanted a baby I'm pretty sure they did not need to go to all of this trouble to put us together._

_They don't just want a child, they also want to control me. They know that if they have my wife and child they can make me do anything. Anything. Two birds with one stone._ Waves of anger and horror emanated from him as he considered what would happen if she failed to escape.

Michal wasn't nearly so appalled. _Maybe we should go along with this plan for now._ He stared at her as if she had grown two heads. _Sooner or later_ _they are going to do it to me no matter what we do. I'd rather have a child conceived in love, or at least happiness and pleasure, than some_ _cold_ _lab somewhere. Then they'll be plenty of trips to the upper levels to get away._

He was still staring at her, his mind a confused jumble of doubt and shock and longing. She let go of his hands. _Wait I have to think ..._

"Too much thinking," she said out loud, and put her hands on his neck and kissed him. She had never kissed anyone before, but had seen memories of it many times in people's minds, all kinds of kisses: tentative and aggressive and wet and awkward. Jarod began to respond, and his was soft and sweet. He put his arms around her and leaned against her, realizing that he could touch her, at least for the thirty seconds they had left. She felt him become aroused, something she had experienced from afar but not the astonishingly pleasurable sensation emanating from someone she was touching.

The sweepers burst in and broke them up, and it was only after they had led her away that Jarod realized that he had failed to give her the key card.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the off chance anyone wants to know what psalm 23 sounds like in the original Hebrew, you can listen to it here. The top two recordings are the melody I had in mind.  
> http://zemirotdatabase.org/view_song.php?id=28#rec


	4. Laila tov

It was another nine days before they let her come back to the dome for the night. In the interim Jarod agonized over what he was going to do. Michal was right, if he refused to do this they would simply haul her up and inseminate her, or worse, subject her to a series of painful injections and procedures for IVF. He would never see her again, and never have a chance to give her the vital key card. He estimated her chances of escape were a dismal five percent without the card.

Amidst all the intellectualizing, Jarod tried to clarify his feelings for Michal to himself. He couldn't tell if he was in love with her, or was merely attracted to her, or wasn't even attracted to her but was just expressing pent-up sexual frustration on a convenient target. That latter possibility horrified him and made him feel even more like deviant pedophile. He desperately wanted to call Sydney to talk about it all, but there was no chance he would do that while they were being monitored. Having grown up being constantly observed as well as running age-inappropriate simulations, there was very little that embarrassed Jarod. But even so there were certain discussions he didn't want recorded for posterity. So he decided on his option of last resort, and simmed an imaginary conversation with Sydney.

_Sydney, I don't know what to do. I don't know if I can make love to Michal and live with myself afterward. I can't tell if I'm a horrible person for wanting her._

_Are you sure you want her? As opposed to any girl they could give you?_

_Yes. Her._

_How do you think she feels about it?_

_Well, she did kiss me first. She has had physiological signs of sexual attraction to me for several weeks. She said she wanted a child conceived in pleasure and happiness._

_That would all indicate that she is willing to consent to intercourse._

_Legally she is a child, she cannot consent._

_You will have to decide if the legal definition applies to this situation. If you found out that she was actually eighteen, with everything else about her the same, would it change your assessment of the morality of the situation?_

_I don't know. I don't know how much 'morality' and 'consent' can be applied at the Centre._

_Do you think you can give her the pleasure and happiness that she wants?_

_Yes._

He knew he could. Even though it was his own mind talking to itself, and he still hadn't decided, somehow he felt better.

 

******

 

When they brought her in, she had her long hair down. Jarod had never seen her like that. He knew even before he touched it that the curls would be soft and tangly and smell like her. He wanted nothing more than to entangled his fingers in her hair while he kissed her.

Sydney was there, saying something to them both about how they didn't have to do this, and there was no going back after. They stared at each other, and Jarod didn't take his eyes off her when he said, "You lost, Sydney. Leave now, please." So he did. Jarod asked the sweepers when they would be back, and got an answer of seven am. Ten hours. And they left as well.

Michal listened to his turbulent emotions, guilt and desire all wrapped up together. She took his hand but didn't say anything, just motioned for him to sit on the floor, as they had done so many times before. _You don't know what you want to do._

 _I know what I want to do. It's just not the responsible thing to do. What do you want to do?_ He could tell by her body language what the answer was, but he wanted to hear her say it. He realized he was putting the burden of the decision on her, and couldn't decide if that was positive or negative.

_I want to live. Before I met you I didn't care anymore. I felt like a robot, I was walking in the valley overshadowed by death, as the psalm says. But now I want to get out of here. I want to make friends and eat and drink and make love and sing and dance and see the world. I want to have a family. I want to do these things myself, not just see a reflection of them in other people's minds. You feel guilty for wanting just a little piece of all that and I don't understand why. This place is not living, Jarod, and neither is Pretending. Now is the time to choose life._

She moved closer to him and kissed him, short light kisses all over his face, and in between she was saying something out loud: haiyeh, haiyeh, haiyeh. The word sounded like a breath. _Live, live, live._

And just like that Jarod made up his mind. He realized that he would likely never see her again, that he could very well live out his days and die in this damned dome, and that responsibility was overrated anyway. She felt the waves on the surface of his mind change, and smiled. They began to kiss for real, deeply, hands all over each other.

He led her to the bed, and they slowly continued kissing and removed each other's clothing piece by piece. Jarod slipped the card key into her shirt pocket as he was taking it off, so they wouldn't forget it this time. When Michal had most of his clothes off, she ran her hands up and down the length of his chest.

_Your body is even more beautiful than I imagined._

_You imagined me with my clothes off?_

_Um ... yeah. And a lot more. I hope you don't mind._

_I absolutely do not mind. Show me what you were doing while you were thinking of 'a lot more.'_

They climbed into the bed, under the white blanket. This wouldn't hamper the coders' ability to spy on them, but made her feel less self-conscious. Once in bed they took off their underwear, and the exploration began in earnest. They lay next to each other, tasting and touching all over their chests and faces and necks.

_Show me_

She took his hand and ran it down her body to between her legs, and taught him how to touch her clitoris, how she liked to stroke it, how much pressure to use. He teased her for a few minutes, watching her become more and more aroused, watching her breaths and face and squirming movements as he stroked her. Before she could get very far he stopped and inserted just the tip of one finger into her. She was already very wet, and he was gratified he didn't feel any remnants of hymen left. He couldn't stand the thought of hurting her, even for a moment. Slowly he pushed the finger in deeper, as far as he could reach, and felt her cervix. It was soft and open and mucousy.

_You are very fertile right now._

_Well I've spit enough, you'd think they could pick the right day. More fingers, that feels good._

Jarod eased in a second finger, slowly stretching her and moving in and out. Out of curiosity he decided to try something he had read about in an anatomy book once. He curled his fingers towards the front her, to see if she had the possibly apocryphal G-spot. She gasped and writhed, so there was clearly some sort of nerve cluster there, but he couldn't tell if she actually liked it or not.

_I think that was too much. I mean it felt good once, but it wouldn't over and over._

_Is that better?_ He resumed sliding in and out. She was almost ready, but he wanted more. He wanted to make her come first. So he slid down and tasted her, and began rhythmically move her clit with his tongue, trying to keep the same pattern and pressure level as he had earlier with his fingers.

 _Yes. Better._ Her breathing was coming more rapidly now, and she rocked towards him with the same rhythm. He slid his fingers back in, two and then three, really stretching her while he worked on her clit. She was emitting small moans now and rocking even faster. Even with all that, it still took a surprising amount of time to bring her to orgasm. Jarod doubted he would make it that long. When she was done he kissed his way back up her body and waited for her breathing to slow down again.

 _That was fun, now I want to feel yours._ Her eyes were shining and she looked alive, more alive than he had ever seen her, vibrating with adrenaline and endorphins. He helped her climb on top of him, but she didn't do anything at first, just laid down on top of him, chest to chest. They wrapped their arms around each other, and Jarod was amazed how wonderful it felt, just to feel someone's skin against his skin.

Eventually she sat up and moved back to straddle him, but then suddenly stopped. _You know I've seen sex so many times in people's minds, but this is the first time I've ever thought about the actual angles involved. I don't want to hurt you._

Jarod had to laugh at that. _Trust me it's not that fragile._ He took her hand this time and showed her how and where to touch his penis, and helped guide it into her. He felt a surge of pleasure as she surrounded him, the sensation new and completely unlike masturbation. But it seemed to overwhelm her, and they both held still for a moment. _Michal? Are you all right? Are you in pain?_

_No, I just feel stretched. It feels both weird and good. But I can feel you too, your pleasure and arousal and your thoughts about me. It's ... a lot ... I just need a minute._

He waited until her muscles relaxed, then shifted a small amount to see how she reacted. She opened her eyes and leaned over so they were chest to chest again, burying her face in his neck. Slowly she began to move, and he put one hand on her hip and another on back and moved with her. She still seemed distracted, like there were too many things going on to attend to any one of them. Finally she stopped and told him, _Jarod, you've got to stop thinking so loudly. I can't grasp it all with that and what your body is feeling and what my body is feeling. It's too much. Stop analyzing and just feel._

So Jarod shifted his attention to his body, and tried not to overthink it. They started moving again and he put all of his concentration into the experience of their joined bodies while she did the same. It did feel good, marvelously good as he drove towards his climax. As he came he was dimly aware that she was gasping and shuddering too, and collapsed on top of him with breathing into his neck again.

_Did ... did you just orgasm a second time?_

_Honestly I could not tell you._

They both laughed, and he hugged her for more of that delicious skin contact.

 

******

 

Around six in the morning Sydney finally couldn't stand it anymore and went back up to the observation room. He had lasted all of about five minutes at the beginning, but when the kissing started he couldn't bear to watch. Unfortunately he couldn't exactly leave either, so he told Watkins to call him if anything traumatic happened, and went to his office to sleep.

Sleep eluded him, though. He could not tell what he was feeling toward Jarod -- disappointment? betrayal? outrage? It was irrational, he knew; Jarod simply turned out to be a human being after all, exactly as Sydney had predicted and the Centre had counted on. He knew Jarod had a deep-rooted desire to love and be loved, and it was hard to fault him for it. But somehow Sydney wanted him to do better, be better. It felt almost like a test, a grand final exam that Jarod had failed.

He wondered what exactly Jarod and the girl were plotting. For there was a plot, Sydney was sure. Even in his current confused state, Jarod would never risk conceiving a child that would be born in captivity and held against him as a bartering chip. That meant he was planning on smuggling the girl out of the Centre somehow, and probably following her. The Centre leaders in their hubris always thought that technology imprisoned him permanently, when in reality it was only Jarod's cooperation and psychological dependency that held him in check. Without it he was gone, and the Pretender project with him.

The question was: What was Sydney going to do about the impending doom of his beloved life's work?

After a fitful night in his office chair, Sydney grabbed some coffee and steeled himself for an update in the observation room. Watkins and Mooney still looked like Christmas had come early, despite being up all night. They were furiously having a silent argument via the red notebooks over exactly how much detail needed to go into their ethogram, with notes like " _phrase: cunnilingus or m-- >f oral sex?"_ being passed back and forth. Mooney scribbled a rough unofficial duration report for Sydney of the evening's behavioral observations:

_mindtalking 4 min_

_sexual activity 27 min_

_mindtalking 4 hr 43 min_

_sexual touching no intercourse 1 hr 23 min_

_mindtalking 2 hr 11 min_

_sexual activity 12 min ongoing_

_no sleep, no audible speech_

 

Sydney glanced up at the monitors to see what they were doing. They were on their side, Jarod spooned behind Michal, slowly moving in and out of her. He had an arm reached around the front of her, stimulating her close to orgasm. As she came he nuzzled her neck and hair, and smiled. Sydney had seen Jarod smile many times in their 27 years together, with excitement or triumph or the wonder in discovering something new. But he had never seen him smiling like this, in joy and intimacy. After Michal's breathing slowed she turned around and they kissed deeply, both laughing softly over something. Then Jarod entered her again, in the missionary position, and their lovemaking took off vigorously. Sydney would have thought it was too rough for her, but she had her arms wrapped tightly around his back and was moving with him, clearly drinking in his body and his pleasure.

At that moment, Sydney made up his mind on what he was going to do: nothing. Nothing at all. He could warn the Centre that the girl was a major flight risk, despite her docility up until that point. He could provoke more security on her, which would likely ruin Jarod's plan to get her away, trapping them both and any child as endless pawns and prisoners. But Sydney finally realized he couldn't live with himself if that happened. He couldn't be responsible for ripping away that look of happiness and joy on Jarod's face, and he couldn't condemn another generation to the same fate of a stolen life and stolen humanity. All he had to do to free them was look the other way, so that is what he did.


	5. Epilogue: Hasof v'hat'chala

Jarod had been searching for Michal for three months and was down to his last three synagogues when he arrived in Savannah, Georgia. If he couldn't find her here, he wasn't sure where to look next. He wasn't a hundred percent sure the Centre hadn't captured her again, but if they had they were keeping her in a well-buried location outside of the Blue Cove complex, of that he was certain. They had mutually agreed that she would settle in one of three cities: Seattle, Milwaukee, or Savannah. All were picked at random, since neither one of them knew anything about the American Jewish population outside of the major metropolitan areas. He knew the cities, the name she would go by and the fact that she would affiliate herself with a synagogue and attend Shabbat services in order for him to find her. That was it.

It had taken Jarod quite a bit longer to break out of the Centre than he anticipated. He heard from Sydney that she was gone two months after their first and only night together. Security around him tightened to noose-like levels, including a live person watching a split of his computer monitor at all times, which proved to be a major hindrance. He was a good boy the entire time, doing everything they asked. Jarod suspected Sydney knew something, maybe everything, but as usual it was impossible to have an honest conversation. So they did the work, and left everything important to their lives unsaid.

He had other urgent business to attend to when he first escaped, so he wasn't able to start the search for a good couple of months. Then, with some investigation into the three cities, he became convinced she would choose Seattle. It had the largest Jewish population of the three -- and thus the easiest to hide in -- and a significant Sephardic presence as well, which he thought she would be attracted to. He scoured over two dozen synagogues and half that number of services before admitting that she wasn't there. Then he moved on to Wisconsin, which had almost as many congregations. Who knew such a small ethnic group would have so many religious organizations? By contrast Savannah's Jewish community was tiny, only a tenth the size of Seattle's. At least it wouldn't take him long to narrow it down.

As was becoming his custom, he walked into the front office of Congregation Agudath Achim on Thursday, so if anyone knew her they would have time to contact her before the sabbath. The receptionist gave him a warm smile.

"Hello, my name is Jarod Jacobs. I'm searching for a young Israeli woman, Elisheva Isaacson. She may have settled here some time in the past three years." The receptionist's smile instantly vanished, and Jarod knew in his gut he finally had the right place.

"May I ask why you are looking for this woman?" she asked in a beautiful drawl.

Jarod fished a card with his cell phone number out of his pocket. "Just tell her Jarod will be at services tomorrow night. She will want to see me, but if she doesn't, she doesn't have to come. Please."

At Friday night services there was no sign of her, and Jarod was beginning to worry he might have to take drastic action, such as break into the synagogue's office. Near the end of the night, however, the rabbi came up to him, not looking particularly friendly. "Are you Jarod?" At his nod, the rabbi motioned him to follow.

He led him to his office, and there at long last was Michal, along with the rabbi's wife holding a small sleeping child. They both cried out and ran to hug each other. Jarod would have kissed her but he felt that would be inappropriate given where they were.

_Why did it take you so long to find me?_

_Well you *did* take our only key card. And I searched Seattle and Milwaukee first. Why did you pick Savannah?_

_Someone told me it was warmer and sunnier. What other criteria is there?_

They held each other at arms length and looked each other over. It had been nearly three years since they had last seen each other. Jarod was a little shocked at how stunning she looked -- tall and tan and strong, healthier than he'd ever seen her. And much less feloniously young.

 _You're prettier than I remember too._ He blinked, having momentarily forgotten she could hear everything. She grinned. Out loud she said, "Jarod, that's Shira," and pointed to the sleeping toddler.

Shira. It was the name they picked out together for a girl. It meant "song." Jarod walked over and lightly stroked her cheek, to the frown of the rabbi's wife. The little girl raised her curly head up for just a moment, then plunked it back down again with a sigh.

Michal took the baby. "Thanks, Becky, I can take it from here." The woman paused to glare at Jarod one more time before she and the rabbi left the room.

"Why is everyone giving me dirty looks?"

"When I first came here, a rumor started that I was a victim of sex trafficking. Which I did not stop. So when a man in his thirties shows up looking for me ..."

"Oh God."

"Yeah, we will need to clean up your reputation. Later though, I need to take her home. Are you coming? I mean, if you want to."

"I would love to." And he smiled.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title translations:  
> 1: Hana'ara = The adolescent girl  
> 2: Ashliot = Illusions  
> 3: Hatikva = The hope (also the name of the Israeli national anthem)  
> 4: Laila tov = Good night  
> 5: Hasof v'hat'chala = The end and the beginning


End file.
